Thaler v. Perlmutter

Thaler v. Perlmutter is the definitive U.S. ruling on AI authorship and copyright. In August 2023, a federal court in D.C. held that works generated entirely by AI without human creative input can't receive copyright protection. The D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed in March 2025. Together with Thaler v. Vidal, it establishes that AI can be neither an inventor nor an author under U.S. law.

Background

Stephen Thaler, the same computer scientist behind the DABUS patent cases, sought to register a copyright for a piece of visual art titled "A Recent Entrance to Paradise." The artwork was generated entirely by his AI system, which he calls the "Creativity Machine." Thaler listed the AI as the author and himself as the copyright owner through a work-made-for-hire theory.

The U.S. Copyright Office denied registration. Its reasoning was straightforward: copyright law requires human authorship, and a work created entirely by a machine without human creative input doesn't qualify. Thaler had been transparent that no human was involved in the creative process, the AI generated the image autonomously.

Thaler sued the Register of Copyrights (Shira Perlmutter) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging the denial. The case was assigned to Judge Beryl A. Howell.

What Happened

Judge Howell heard the case on cross-motions for summary judgment. The core question was whether the Copyright Act requires human authorship, or whether a work created entirely by AI qualifies for copyright protection.

Thaler argued that copyright should protect AI-generated works to incentivize the development of creative AI systems. He pointed to the economic rationale behind copyright: encouraging the creation of new works. If AI-generated works can't be copyrighted, he argued, there's less incentive to build creative AI.

The Copyright Office argued that centuries of copyright law assumed human authorship. The Constitution's Copyright Clause grants Congress the power to secure rights to "Authors," and the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that copyright requires an original work of authorship created by a human being. The Office pointed to its own longstanding policy, reaffirmed in a 2023 guidance document, that AI-generated content without human authorship isn't registrable.

The Ruling

On August 18, 2023, Judge Howell granted summary judgment for the Copyright Office. She held that human authorship is a "bedrock requirement of copyright" and that the Copyright Act does not extend protection to works generated entirely by AI.

The opinion traced the history of copyright from its constitutional origins through Supreme Court precedent. Every case addressing authorship assumed a human creator. The court found no basis in statute or precedent for extending copyright to non-human entities.

Thaler appealed to the D.C. Circuit, which unanimously affirmed on March 18, 2025. The appellate court agreed that human authorship is required under the Copyright Act. With both the district court and the D.C. Circuit aligned, and the Supreme Court having already declined certiorari in the parallel patent case, the legal question of purely AI-generated authorship is settled in the U.S.

Outcome: Summary judgment granted for the Copyright Office. The D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed on March 18, 2025, holding that the Copyright Act requires human authorship and AI-generated works without human creative input are not copyrightable.

Why This Case Matters

Thaler v. Perlmutter draws the line on the copyright side of AI-generated content. Works created entirely by AI, with no human creative input, are in the public domain. They can't be copyrighted, which means they can't be exclusively owned, licensed, or enforced against infringers.

The ruling left a critical question open: how much human involvement is enough for AI-assisted works to qualify for copyright? The Copyright Office has addressed this partially in its guidance, suggesting that human selection, arrangement, and creative choices in using AI tools can establish authorship. But the exact threshold remains unsettled. An attorney who uses AI to generate a first draft and then substantially edits it is in a different position than someone who types a prompt and publishes the raw output.

For law firms, the practical impact is significant. Legal documents generated entirely by AI, without human creative input, aren't copyrightable. Briefs, memos, and contracts that involve substantial human authorship with AI assistance likely are. But the boundary isn't bright, and firms generating large volumes of AI-assisted work product need to understand where their output falls on this spectrum.

Lessons for Attorneys

If your clients create content using AI, the copyright analysis depends entirely on the level of human creative involvement. Pure AI output with no human creative input gets no copyright protection. But human-directed AI output, where a person makes creative choices about prompts, selects among outputs, edits and arranges the results, likely qualifies for at least partial copyright protection. Document the human creative process.

For attorneys drafting AI-related contracts, the copyright status of AI-generated deliverables matters. If a client commissions AI-generated content and expects to own the copyright, the contract should specify the level of human creative involvement required. A work-for-hire agreement for purely AI-generated content creates a false sense of ownership because there's nothing to own.

For firms concerned about protecting their own AI-assisted work product, the key is to ensure meaningful human authorship at every stage. Use AI for drafts, research, and structure, but have attorneys make substantive creative decisions about the final product. This human editorial layer is what separates copyrightable work product from unprotectable AI output.

The Bottom Line

AI-generated works without human creative input don't get copyright protection. Thaler v. Perlmutter settled this at the district and appellate levels. Attorneys need to document human creative involvement in AI-assisted work to preserve copyright claims.